What Are the Implications of Being the First Intelligent Life in the Galaxy?

[marcus]

In Goldbarz thread, CarlB voiced this idea:

My vote is that we're the first intelligent life to mature in the galaxy and that we will likely be able to colonize the rest of it before anything else shows up.
Carl

this is a possible response to Fermi's question "where are they" or to the apparent Silence. what's your reaction?

BTW it is not as optimistic as it sounds right off because he just says "be able" and we might have the potential but fail to do it if we destroy or cripple ourselves before colonization gets rolling.

1. sounds like a plan, go for it

2. we're the first species to mature with an itch to colonize, but we lack the ability to gratify the itch (please give reason)

3. we're not the first: others have begun colonizing but they are "silent" (they communicate in channels we haven't sampled)

4. other

 

[Garth]

My 'take' is 4.

- We are quarantined in a zoo until proven safe for others to play with!

(Based on objective science and pure speculation obviously!)

Garth

 

[marcus]

good suggestion Garth, a valid alternative, please click your vote on 4. "other" !

thanks, I see you did

in case anyone missed it in the other thread, here is CarlB post where he says that:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=810026&postcount=50

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

I hope it doesn't take more than a couple billion years, because of the whole Andromeda crashing into the milky way deal.

 

[Vast]

I’m giving some thought to the question “are we the first” and it seems a little pretentious when we have absolutely no idea of what’s happening around us, but then I noticed that you limited it to just this galaxy, so in that respect we could in fact be the first in our galaxy. Still I think the galaxy is old enough that we may have been beaten by a few million years, which is more than enough time in which to colonize one galaxy.

 

[Vast]

I hope it doesn't take more than a couple billion years, because of the whole Andromeda crashing into the milky way deal.

The space in between stars is such that when the galaxies do collide they’ll pass right through each other, of course they’ll be torn away from their normal orbits, but there shouldn’t be any major destruction.

 

[Danger]

I went with #4. I doubt that we're the first to reach our current level of space travel ability. That's still an awfully long way from being able to colonize anything outside of our own solar system. The same physical barriers would apply to any species that tries, so at best colonization is probably limited to the colonists' immediate stellar neighbourhood.

 

[Andre]

Yet another variation of Drake? My pure speculation two cents say that there has never been and there never will be any colonialization in any Galaxy.

I know if humans were meant to fly then the creator would have given them wings. But if you extent the drake equation with the factors that intelligent live would outgrow their adverse working primitive instincts in a complex society, that they would overcome physical laws, etc all within the period from basic live to the next cosmic or other cataclysmic disaster, then the odds are getting extremely small.

But the discussion is basically pointless.

 

[Danger]

I know if humans were meant to fly then the creator would have given them wings.

By that reasoning, if we were meant to drive, we'd have 4 wheels and a carbuerator. It has nothing to do with scientific speculation. The Drake equation is pretty lame, actually, although it gives something to go by.

 

[vincentm]

I voted for #3 simply because the number of exoplanets discovered so far ( i think) aren't near the potential amount that is out there, i think there are WAY more planets in our galaxy that can be harboring life, not only that. But i don't think we even know what is on the other side of the Milkyway, right?

 

[Gold Barz]

I went with #4. I doubt that we're the first to reach our current level of space travel ability. That's still an awfully long way from being able to colonize anything outside of our own solar system. The same physical barriers would apply to any species that tries, so at best colonization is probably limited to the colonists' immediate stellar neighbourhood.

Agreed...

 

[WarrenPlatts]

It's ours for the taking

I think the galaxy is old enough that we may have been beaten by a few million years, which is more than enough time in which to colonize one galaxy.

The Copernican principle of mediocrity suggests that we're not special and that therefore we are not alone; however, the anthropic principle suggests that we are. Someone has to be first--it's like the lottery: someone has to win.

If we have been beaten to the punch, it's much more likely that we would have been beaten by a few hundred million years, than by a few million years. As I've written before, if human-equivalent intelligence is the inevitable result of evolution on planets as life-friendly as Earth is, then one or more species of intelligent dinosaurs should have evolved right here on Earth 100 mybp.

I think Stephen Jay Gould once estimated that there is perhaps a 1 in 100,000 chance for human-equivalent intelligence to evolve on planets supporting metazoan life (which after all took three billion years of evolution to achieve here on Earth)--and this may have been an overestimate. Yes, it's true that there are a lot of stars, but there are a lot of coincidences that had to happen for human-equivalent intelligence to evolve on Earth.

In addition, our geographical location within the Milky Way is in the zone where we would expect intelligent life to evolve first.

At best colonization is probably limited to the colonists' immediate stellar neighbourhood.

Say our immediate stellar neighborhood is 50 ly. Well, for a colony at the edge of this bubble, their immediate stellar neighborhood will extend for another 50 ly, and so on ad infinitum.

But the discussion is basically pointless.

Actually, there are political repercussions: if the colonization of space is an exercize in futility, then we shouldn't waste scarce resources on manned spaceflight.

Bottom Line: Either we are the first, or UFO's are real.

 

[Gold Barz]

And how did you come to that conclusion, adding up all of your SWAG's together? I admire your confidence on that though.

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

The space in between stars is such that when the galaxies do collide they’ll pass right through each other, of course they’ll be torn away from their normal orbits, but there shouldn’t be any major destruction.

yeah i suppose, i mean, we'd be able to know what planets will turn to junk and what ones won't and also what ones will be able so support life that weren't able to before, and also what systems will completely be destroyed. Overall, things will be about the same, assuming we pick the correct places to hang out while the battle of the galaxies occurs. Instead of wathcing football, we'll be watching two galaxies duke it out! I'm rooting for the milkey way, but I'm betting on Andromeda.

 

[Chronos]

If life is prevalent in the galaxy, and few manage to spring from manure to intelligience, the only choices left is: we are alone [I find that unlikely], or they too have not figured out how to break the light barrier.

 

[Andre]

By that reasoning, if we were meant to drive, we'd have 4 wheels and a carbuerator. It has nothing to do with scientific speculation. The Drake equation is pretty lame, actually, although it gives something to go by.

Sorry for the typo, I failed to add: [/sarcasm off].

Point is that can't use the argument that something is deemed impossible. The point is if its probable. Take us, after having filled in the variables to the Drake equation. What's going to happen first:

- Into the wild black yonder to the next solar system?
- Serious setback of human civilisation due to build-in deficiencies (wars, depletion of resources, etc)?
- Serious setback due to natural factors, meteorites, volcanic, tectonic disasters?

 

[Cosmo16]

I went with #4. I doubt that we're the first to reach our current level of space travel ability. That's still an awfully long way from being able to colonize anything outside of our own solar system. The same physical barriers would apply to any species that tries, so at best colonization is probably limited to the colonists' immediate stellar neighbourhood.

Exactly what I thought.

 

[Danger]

we'll be watching two galaxies duke it out! I'm rooting for the milkey way, but I'm betting on Andromeda.

Won't happen. Once they're both weakened and distracted, the Megallanic Clouds are going to team up and blindside them both.

Sorry for the typo, I failed to add: [/sarcasm off].

Now it makes sense. I was wondering why in the world a pilot would say that.
I believe that once space technology is firmly in the private and corporate hands rather than governmental pseudopods, the race will be on to get things going locally. Ion Compressed Antimatter Nuclear propulsion and similar projects will even make travel to the nearest stars practical. The question is in whether or not colonization would be practical from an economic standpoint. We won't need to send anyone until the sun starts to destabilize, since our own system has more than enough room and resources to sustain our species.

 

[suraj]

First species or not?

We are not the first species in universe. Before bigbang the universe is present. whole universe is driven by super power of god, which was not scientificly prove.

 

[vincentm]

whole universe is driven by super power of god, which was not scientificly prove.

Let's not go there shall we? Further debate on this statement of yours will get this thread closed.

 

[Nereid]

Long before 'colonisation' becomes a feasible option, intelligent critters discover how to 'download', first to silicon (or whatever locally floats their boat), then to DM. With a universe many, many times 'bigger' to play in, who could care less about some trivial baryonic goop?

Hey, we're speculating, right?

 

[Chronos]

Given what we currently know, escape from planet Earth is impossible. Moreover, it's not just technologically infeasible, it's a scientific impossibility. Of course, I am perfectly willing to change my mind when FTL travel becomes a theoretical possibility.

 

[Astronuc]

I went with #4 - because 1) we do not have the capability to travel long distances within the Solar System, and we seem to have an inordinate difficult just getting to orbit or the Moon ( ) let alone Mars, and 2) we just don't know if there is another civilization(s) out there. If they are on the oppposited side of the galaxy, they would be shielded by the galactic core.

Traveling to the edge of the solar system and beyond would present enormous challenges, mainly due to lack of gravity. If humans took off now, and got anywhere in hundreds or thousands of years, the bodies would have detiorated in zero-g, and they would need exoskeleons (spacesuits) by the time they got anywhere (and where that would be ?)

We live in such a narrow set of parameters - temperature, pressure, atmospheric chemistry - that just about every other place we know is simply inhospitable.

Besides, we need to work on taking better care of what we've got at home.

 

[WarrenPlatts]

we do not have the capability to travel long distances within the Solar System, and we seem to have an inordinate difficult just getting to orbit or the Moon ( ) let alone Mars.

Carbon nanotube technology would allow the construction of a space elevator, so that getting to geosynchronous orbit would be as easy as taking a train across the country.

Traveling to the edge of the solar system and beyond would present enormous challenges, mainly due to lack of gravity.

Artificial gravity can be induced simply by rotating the spacecraft .

If humans took off now, and got anywhere in hundreds or thousands of years, the bodies would have detiorated in zero-g, and they would need exoskeleons (spacesuits) by the time they got anywhere.

If humans took off now they would be left in the dust by astronauts leaving in a century or two.

We live in such a narrow set of parameters - temperature, pressure, atmospheric chemistry - that just about every other place we know is simply inhospitable.

That's what terraforming is for.

Besides, we need to work on taking better care of what we've got at home.

If you really care about the Earth, you should support the whole human species emigrating into space and allowing Earth to run wild once again (cf. Asimov's "The last shuttle")

Given what we currently know, escape from planet Earth is impossible. Moreover, it's not just technologically infeasible, it's a scientific impossibility. Of course, I am perfectly willing to change my mind when FTL travel becomes a theoretical possibility.

We've already escaped from the planet: the flag is planted on the Moon, and the ISS has been continuously manned for five years now. So why is space travel a scientific impossibility--at least within our solar system? My main concern would be radiation in space; some guy on the radio last night said that it is impossible for humans to safely orbit Jupiter because Jupiter emits so much radiation, any life would be fried. Which implies that we couldn't colonize Europa, for example. Is this true? He seemed to think Titan would be better.

As for interstellar travel, if relativistic speeds could be achieved, the time dilation effect implies that the subjective time it would take for astronauts to travel to the stars would be tolerable.

 

[Chronos]

Jupiter has a supersized version of the Earth's Van Allen belts. Floating through them would be very hard on your astronaut. The moon missions exited Earth orbit through the Earth's magnetic north pole to avoid this dangerous radiation. I would have to look up the radiation level of Europa. Titan is a horse of a different color... it's satellite of Saturn.

While it might be feasible [albeit hugely expensive] to colonize our solar system, interstellar space travel is not even a remote possibility by phyics as we know it. It would take 10,000 years to send a probe to alpha centauri by any technology now known [which would be very hard on batteries]. Lacking FTL technology, it appears unlikely we will ever venture beyond our solar system.

 

[Danger]

It would take 10,000 years to send a probe to alpha centauri by any technology now known [which would be very hard on batteries]. Lacking FTL technology, it appears unlikely we will ever venture beyond our solar system.

Not so. The technology is in the development stage. The question is whether or not anyone is willing to pay for it. Hence my belief in the free enterprise (pun unintentional) approach. I refer you to the aforementioned Ion Compressed Antimatter Nuclear project, as well as Antiproton Initiated Micro Fusion/Fission. Either is capable of short range interstellar travel within an acceptable time scale.

 

[Chronos]

The Ion Compressed Antimatter Nuclear, and Antiproton Initiated Micro Fusion/Fission projects are fantasy, not fact. Until a working model is tested and proven to work, I would not characterize them as 'known' technologies. The greatest speed ever actually attained by a man-made object [the Ulysses probe] is around 27.4 miles per second. At that speed, it would reach Alpha centauri in about 30,000 Earth years.

 

[Danger]

I think that the term 'fantasy' is a bit harsh. Would Penn State and NASA really be devoting that much effort and funding into something that can't work?

 

[turbo]

The greatest speed ever actually attained by a man-made object [the Ulysses probe] is around 27.4 miles per second. At that speed, it would reach Alpha centauri in about 30,000 Earth years.

We need to bear in mind that the maximum speed of an interplanetary probe is hardly indicative of the performance required of an interstellar probe. Such a probe would have to travel not with our current measley "kick in the pants" initial chemical rocket boost and then gain velocity with carefully-planned planetary flybys. To reach Alpha Centauri in a reasonable time, the probe would have to accelerate continuously for a long time (perhaps gathering reaction mass along the way...), and of course, if we want to insert the probe into the a-C system so it can tell us anything useful about it, the probe will have to decelerate throughout the latter part of the journey.

Goofy sci-fi idea...perhaps practical interstellar travel requires the violation of causality so that the energy shed during deceleration can be borrowed (in advance, from our rigid "arrow of time" perspective) to supply the energy needed for acceleration in the initial phase. Dr. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle allows all kinds of interesting things to happen on the Planck scale. Virtual particle/antiparticle pairs arise in the quantum vacuum, but must self-annihilate in a time inversely proportional to the amount of energy borrowed. Since the energy borrowed for tunneling of macroscopic objects would be immense, the time to pay it back would be too small to measure, meaning that such "travel" would be instantaneous instead of merely FTL.

 

[WarrenPlatts]

The greatest speed ever actually attained by a man-made object [the Ulysses probe] is around 27.4 miles per second. At that speed, it would reach Alpha centauri in about 30,000 Earth years.

One hundred years ago, the fastest thing we had could maybe go 100 miles per hour (about .03 miles per second). 50 years ago we broke the sound barrier, (about .2 miles per second). Now we have craft that go 27 miles per second--a 2 order of magnitude improvement in 50 years. So, in 50 years, we should expect 3 orders of magnitude improvement. That is, we should be able to routinely build craft that can fly at 27,000+ miles per second, which would get a probe there in a mere 30 years, even at non-relativistic speeds.

 

[turbo]

One hundred years ago, the fastest thing we had could maybe go 100 miles per hour (about .03 miles per second). 50 years ago we broke the sound barrier, (about .2 miles per second).

We have had the technology to accelerate small objects to speeds faster than the speed of sound for a whole lot longer than 50 years. Around the time of the American Civil War, Jules Verne wrote a novel in which this technology was used to fly people to the Moon.

 

[WarrenPlatts]

Quite true, but I was thinking of manned vehicles mainly. Granted, we haven't constructed a manned craft that is as fast as Ulysses, but it could be done with today's technology.

 

[Chronos]

The effects of acceleration on the crew is another consideration. 1g would obviously be tolerable. I think a constant acceleration of 3g would surely be intolerable. 2g might be marginally tolerable for a very fit crew. This would also apply to the braking phase of the journey. I haven't crunched the numbers [which is not terribly difficult], but am guessing we might be talking on the order of a century to reach alpha century.

 

[vincentm]

What i'd like to know is how do we know the requirements here on Earth (when life did begin) aren't the same ones needed for life to begin elsewhere in our galaxy or any other?

 

[WarrenPlatts]

Just open up a can of Cambell's prebiotic soup and zap it in the microwave.

The problem is that while it is easy to get life started, it is much more difficult to evolve human-level intelligence.